#100 - Making money on the web

Its our 100th blog! Whoopee! Well for the few of you that read this, thanks for coming along. I'll take some time this week to decide whether its fun or not. We only had 10 visitors last week so it must not be but so much fun to you all!

I was listening to NPR on the way back from Ohio yesterday. They had an interesting segment on the first web comic strip. Cartoonist Pete Abrams started a comic strip web site 10 years ago called Sluggy Freelance. Now I've been to the site several times and I'll be upfront and say, I don't get that type of comic. However over 100,000 people differ with that opinion every day. I'm more a Peanuts and Dagwood type of guy. But Mr. Adams has made a living through his web comic.

He tried using advertising, but it took too much of his time and never made enough to be worth the effort. He tried charging for site access, but then ended up with almost no viewers. He finally hit upon a combination of commercial products and site extras to make his living. You can by Sluggy Freelance dolls, T shirts, buttons, pins and books from the site. If you want to see more then the basic comic strip you can subscribe to full access of ad free browsing [Defenders of the Nifty Subscription], exclusive content and of course the Sluggy Freelance blog (as an aside, maybe I should charge for my blog?). This combination makes Abrams financially secure enough to raise a family and live comfortably.

Just another way to make a buck on the Web. Interesting.

#99 - PC Guru has PC blues

I came home today and started to work on my Desktop PC (the PC not the Mac Mini). It had been a bit sluggish lately and had locked up several times when trying to burn a DVD. Today it ran for 45 minutes then locked up. I never could get it to completely restart. I got into Safe Mode (hit that F8 key when you start up) and tried restoring to Monday's setup. It did the restore OK then locked up. I realized at this time that my last back up was August 17. So I pulled the hard drive from the PC and took it to my Bench PC and installed the Hard Drive. I made DVD backups and attached my external Hard Drive and made backups. I found my Outlook info and backed it up also. I then put the Hard Drive back in and it wouldn't start up at all. Lastly I took out the last memory chip I had installed (I had 640MB memory so I dropped back to 512MB). The PC immediately started up and here I am typing away.

I copied all my backups to my laptop so now I'm backed up everywhere (whew relief). I tell you all this faithful reader so that you will make sure your data is backed up today. If you have Outlook data do the File, Import/Export to a backup device of your entire Personal Folder. I'm just going to have to backup every other day instead of once a week.

My mom turned 80 today, so we are off to Ohio Friday to belatedly celebrate with my folks. See you next week!

#98 - Blu-Ray vs HD DVD Will the winner please stand up?

Ah another technology standard battle. First there was the Beta vs VCR battle. Then CDs vs cassettes. Then DVDs, but look at how many types of DVDs there are: +R, -R, RAM, Video, -RW, +RW. None of them "won" out so DVD drives have to be able to read and write all of these. Now along comes Blu-Ray and HD DVD. We are just about half way through the first round of battle. So I thought it might be a good time to review what they are and what they can do.

Blu-Ray as the name suggests uses a Blue-Violet laser that can focus more precisely then the red lasers used by DVD and CD players. This better precision allows for a tighter packing of data so that a disc encoded by Blu-Ray can hold 25GB of information versus 4.7GB of a traditional DVD. In the Blu-Ray corner are: Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson.

HD-DVD is an evolutionary technology based on red laser technology. It can store 15GB of information on a DVD. HD-DVD is backwardly compatible with DVD and CD technologies, meaning an HD-DVD player can play CD, DVD & HD-DVD formats. In the HD-DVD corner are Toshiba, NEC and Microsoft. Also of note is that Panasonic has been wishy washy and had been on both sides of the fence.

So what does this mean to you? Well if you are in the market to buy a new video player it means confusion. Movies are now coming out in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. The pictures are spectacular and go nicely on that new 42" HD TV you recently purchased. I can't tell you today who is going to win, but I can tell you that the Blu-Ray is probably the better technology, but so was Beta. I guess you pays your money and you takes your chances. I hope its all sorted out by the time I buy a big LCD TV!

#97 - To Train or not to Train

Many of you read in my August Newsletter that this will be the last year of my doing training in the PCSS Training Center. The reason being the move to Vista outdating all my training center PCs. I thought I might elaborate here on my thought process and the technology that drove the decision.

I have 5 PCs of various ages that I use in my classes. Some of the PCs were upgraded from Windows 98 without much issue. Some were purchased new for the Training Center, but only about 1 per year. By acquiring the computers over time I was able to put together a nice training center that met the needs of my customers. They all have Windows XP Pro and the complete set of Office 2003 programs. They are tied in by Ethernet to my network so they have Internet access. I also have an HP printer/scanner/copier that I use in most in the classes.

So that's where I am. The introduction of Windows Vista and Office 2007 raises the bar on what equipment I have to have to teach. To run Vista properly you must have 1GB of memory (2GB is much better), high end graphics and a fairly big hard drive. None of the 5 PCs meet that criteria or can even be upgraded to that very easily. Then comes the issue of what flavor of Windows Vista would I put on the PCs. I get licencing for 10 copies of Windows Vista Business version (also Office 2007)as part of my Microsoft Partnership. There are 3 other versions of Vista flying around out there. Then I thought about would my existing printer/scanner/copier work with Vista? As of today the answer is no. Still waiting on HP to come up with a Vista Driver for it.

By my own estimates (and remember I get the dealer discount!) I would have to invest well over $4000.00 to be where I need to be to have the Center up to new standards. I would also have to invest a lot of time and sweat in setting the systems up. Now when you consider I charge $74 per class and there are about $20 per class in materials, you can see it would take several years to pay for this investment. Logic indicates this wouldn't be most prudent. So here I am willing to train at your site come the fall of 2008. If you are interested in the last series of classes please let me know.

#96 - Clothing Technology

I watched with great interest the PGA golf tournament this past weekend. It was in tortuous Tulsa, Oklahoma. The temperature was in the low 100s all weekend and the players were certainly earning their keep by walking around that steamer of a golf course. Tiger Woods won wearing his traditional red final round shirt. I noticed that it didn't seem to get as soaked through as it would have say 5 years ago. Golf shirts have certainly taken a high tech bent lately.

The LIFA Stay-Dry technology allows you to wear a shirt in great humidity and high temperature and never look like you've been a sauna. The fabric wicks moisture away from the skin and promotes evaporation so that you don't retain the moisture in the cloth. Huge difference from 100% cotton shirts. The wife bought me a Stay Dry golf shirt from Nike last year and it has been wonderful on those few hot humid days on the golf course. Outfitter Helly Hanson uses LIFA in much of its outdoor wear. It seems that the clothing technology works equally well in cold weather. Better living through Better technology!

#95 - Why is backing up your Outlook so tough?

Its always been a mystery to me why Outlook and Outlook Express have no easy way to backup the important data you have. In both programs you have to go to File, Import/Export and go through eight or nine clicks to backup the data. Its not easy and its not intuitive. Why would Microsoft make it so hard to save your data? You have important contacts, calendar items and emails that you would hate to lose. In fact I would say that some users have no more valuable data on their PC then their Outlook information. Every other program (not from Microsoft) have great backup features. Intuit programs (Quicken, QuickBooks) do a great job of reminding you when to back up and giving you control of where to backup. I've never got an answer that makes sense from Microsoft.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered an add in program from Microsoft that actually puts a Backup button on your Outlook File menu bar. (Sorry no such luck for Outlook Express users) Now it isn't the easiest program to add in so if you use Outlook and want a better way to backup your data click here: Outlook Backup Follow the directions and 2 downloads to make it work. Then pick your destination directory (we made a new Outlook Backup folder in our My Documents folder). Now why this isn't standard in Office and not a download is beyond me. Let me know how it goes!

#94 - Does your password really protect?

The average American office worker has to memorize 4 passwords to do their work. Many companies have instituted policies that require the change of password every month. Every site you try to buy something from or even just visit preferred content requires you to have a user name and password. So what does that password really protect? In the case on online purchases, it protects your credit card or Paypal account. It could protect your banking information or other personal information such as address, email and phone number. So passwords protect a lot. So why do you use a simple word password like your pets name to protect all that information? Knowledgeable computer advisers recommend you use what they call a STRONG PASSWORD.

Here is an excellent Microsoft site that takes you through the process of selecting a password: STRONG PASSWORDS. Essentially you need to use a password (or phrase) that you will remember and have characters, numbers and symbols (!~@#$%^&_+) in them. This makes the password thief's job a lot harder. I like to use a common word or phrase interspersed with numbers/symbols. Like C0u1N2t3i$n%g^. In this password I have used capitals and small letters, numbers and symbols in a somewhat random matter. It does make a pattern that I can remember. The longer the password the better. I also like passwords where I can vary a letter or number if I have to change it often. So come on and be creative with your passwords! Also don't leave them the same forever or use the same password for every site. I change all my main passwords on my birthday. You can also create a spreadsheet or log book with the particular site and the password you use for that site.

#93 - Flash Memory Drives

I reported in an early blog post that I foresaw computers with less moving parts. Flash memory, like those used in geek sticks, stores information faster. Unfortunately there is a limit to the number of times you can write to flash memory. Using a technology called load leveling, flash memory makers are designing hard drive replacements that have no moving parts. Here is a picture of a TDK designed 32GB drive. This drive has a standard IDE interface (just like older hard drives!) and can be hooked up in almost any PC. They are expensive right now ($500), but I see prices coming down as more are made. Notebook computers look to be the first place you'll see them. No moving parts for better reliability, better speed, less heat and very light weight will make this technology a winner!

Geek sticks (USB Flash memory drives) are also getting bigger. Standard size now is 2GB with 4GB and 8 GB drive available. The larger sized drives aren't as cost competitive as the 2GB price point, but they too will get reasonable as production ramps up.